


Seven Words for Snow

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canada, F/F, Gen, Historical, Travel, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-24 09:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: The notebook is labelledWinter, 1930 - Grand River to n'Daki Menan. Excerpts from the Canadian travels of Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, itinerant naturalist.





	Seven Words for Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tetley the Second in the 2014 [HoggyWartyXmas](https://hoggywartyxmas.livejournal.com) exchange.

_Tucked between two pages: one train ticket for the North Star Rail Line, Toronto to Temagami, third class, mint green, punched._

She left Union Station on December 20th, her thoughts still back among the hickory trees and wet winter grass of Ohsweken and her feet already itching to keep moving north. The train was too cold and too hot at the same time, crowded with Saturday travellers and stinking of wet wool and station lunches.

"Your ticket, sir?"

No sooner had the conductor said it than he seemed to realise his error. Embarrassment flashed across his face, followed by a twist of something harder as he punched her ticket. Willie slouched down into the canvas and fur of her parka and looked out the window. Pip settled in under the seat with a huff, laying his muzzle on the toe of her left boot.

Outside, the sky was the colour of milk pudding. The train rolled past factories and warehouses, busy collections of workers in sweaters and toques, and finally the pale blue glimmer of the ice-rimed shores of Lake Ontario. She held her breath until she could see pine trees again.

//

_Transcribed in black ink:_

_Auntie Pauline's Fry Bread_

_2 cups flour_   
_1 tablespoon baking powder_   
_1/2 teaspoon salt_   
_1/2 cup milk_   
_1/2 cup water_   
_lard for frying_

_Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Pour in milk and water. Toss with a fork until dough is soft and sticky. Turn out onto a floured table and press into a circle._

_Fry in a skillet until puffed up and golden._

She took out her lunch when the train had just passed the town of Gravenhurst. She peeled away the waxed paper with care, trying to preserve the neat corners of Bertha's wrapping job. The bannock was still crisp and airy, and she smiled to find a generous layer of blueberry jam hidden in between the pieces. She ate the sandwich slowly, savouring the indulgence. There would be no fresh baking for a while.

Willie had a tent, a wand, a knife, and some fishing line, along with the provisions bought in Brantford with the better part of the money she had earned on a supply teacher contract that autumn. Tinned beans and salted kippers and the like were shrunk down and lightened until her pack creaked with spells. And, of course, she also had Pip, who had signed on in Cape Breton and was proving to be a decent little retriever despite his dubious provenance.

He nosed at her leg, and she dropped the last bit of bannock for him to gratefully snatch from the air.

//

_Under the heading "LAKES":_

_Little Pockwock_   
_Big Mushamush_   
_Digdeguash_   
_Miramichi_   
_Oromocto_   
_Wauklahega_   
_Manitou_   
_Wakuach_   
_Kashagawigamog_   
_Muskoka_

She licked the end of her pencil and added to the list  _Waseosa_  and  _Little Doe_ ,  _Turtle_  and  _Skeleton_ ,  _Nipissing_  and  _Jumping Caribou_. Snowflakes flew past the window, fat and blurry, streaming across the glass when they landed and came apart. Towns and roads were few and far between now, giving way to an increasingly dense cloak of forest, behind which lay the scattered timber and mining camps. The crust of the Laurentian Plateau burst through the soil and snow like the bones and teeth of a long-buried dragon.

There were a quarter million lakes in the province, or so her battered guide book claimed. It was too round a number for Willie’s liking. A number like that made a woman want to take count for herself, wandering wherever the rivers and creeks led her, making her own study of each and every pocket in the craggy stone. 

Or at least, she amended, the ones with marvellous names.

//

Her destination was not so much a  _stop_  as a pause. There was no station, no bench, not even a proper sign to mark her point of arrival. The train slowed down as it neared a battered flag, still moving fast enough to require a bit of pluck on her part, but all six legs jumping clear found solid ground without injury. 

Willie skidded down the icy embankment, dragging her pack along, and landed in a puff of white powder. Pip hurtled into the snow beside her, briefly doggy-paddling in the depths of it before finding purchase and clambering up onto the glittering crust of ice overtop. He shook himself as the train hurtled on.

Then, when the rattle and clamour of steel and iron had passed, there was silence.

It was a blessed big silence, stretching from the blinding white drifts to the soft wisps of cloud above, bristling at the edges of the fir boughs and sitting heavily in her ears. She brushed herself off and shivered at the tiny frozen squeak of compressing snow beneath her feet. When she took a deep breath of the clean, crisp air, her nostrils tried to stick together. 

The sun was already touching the tops of the matchstick birch trees to the west. She ought to get a move on if she wanted to find a place to camp before nightfall. 

_A hasty sketch in blunt charcoal: an indistinct heap sunken in the snow, surrounded by seven large ravens. Smudged, overlapping paw prints lead away from the scene. The shadows of trees stretch outwards._

_Label: "C. corax and R. t. caribou (deceased)."_

//

Willie set up her tent in the last of the late afternoon light. It was a modest dwelling, containing a tiny bedroom and a water closet. Conserving heat and minimizing weight took precedence over luxury out in the bush. She ate a supper of crackers and anchovies and then packed her pipe with a conservative ration of tobacco and sat just inside the charmed warmth of the tent, watching the stars come out. They were as innumerable as the lakes and bright as diamond dust as they clustered together on the darkening velvet of the vast evening sky.

The air was as dry as it was cold. She tucked her nose and chapped lips into her muffler, thinking of the damp chill rising off the Grand River, and of the big soft bed in the ladies’ boarding house where she had lodged in Brantford. Her breath escaped in tiny vents of steam from under rough wool as she thought of Bertha in her night dress, braiding her long black hair.

She had nearly asked her to come along. The question had been a persistent itch, a silly fancy nurtured in the pages of half-knut novels, where Indian wives were shy maidens who never seemed to have families, or professions, or politics. Bertha, bless her, had seemed to hear the unasked question and had kissed her softly on the mouth to shut her up before sending her off. 

_"You'll come back," she said, "and when you do, you owe me a holiday in England. That Minister of yours isn't answering my petitions."_

Nearby, a little saw-whet owl whistled. Further away, the wind gasped, sounding as if it were running backwards between the stone hills. Somewhere in between, there was a high, lonesome howl. It hatched goose pimples on Willie’s skin with the memory of something long-limbed and yipping moving fast through a thicket, leaving the red autumn leaves un-crackled in its wake. Monkey-dog, they called it in Ohsweken, and smiled to humour her when she stated her intention to document it.

_A blank page, its corner folded for revisiting._

But it was only wolves out in the darkness tonight. More voices joined in, warbling and liquid. Pip tilted back his shaggy head and joined in, the traitor.

//

_"G. gulo": A russet wolverine skulks across the snow, its oily fur gleaming. Behind it, a pink stain marks the melted place where an indistinguishable breakfast was gutted._

_"E. dorsatum": A grey-flecked porcupine clings to the tilted trunk of a bare maple tree, dozing in the weak afternoon sun._

_"L. canadensis": Several close studies of the tufted ear of a lynx._

_"C. cardinalis": A vivid red cardinal perches on a birch branch. Musical notation below records a shrill, rapid call._

Willie gave up on trying to capture any useful likeness of the aurora borealis and tucked her coloured pencils away. 

Above the horizon, pale rays of green and pink shimmered eerily, like the veil separating this world from the next. At times like this, there seemed to be no real use in writing a book. It was a fine pretence for travelling, but there were some things you could only see for yourself. And besides, she thought, bundling up with Pip beside her campfire and watching the dancing lights, if her publisher were anything like Uncle Archibald, any diary of her travels would only be hacked to sensational ribbons for the public and titled something dreadful like  _A Witch in the Wilderness_ , or worse,  _Wayfaring with Wendigos_.

She snorted.

//

Her family, she knew, would ask if she'd had snow for Christmas, and she would be happy to tell them that she had.

It was not a gentle flutter of crystalline flakes that would be at home on the cover of a painted Christmas annual, but a screaming squall so bad that Pip kept two paws in the tent when he lifted a leg shortly after what might have been dawn. Willie lit her camp stove as the tent shivered and flapped and was once or twice nearly uprooted. She washed her face with a bracing handful of snow and then prepared a holiday feast of powdered eggs, corned beef hash, and coffee. 

Outside, the world had turned to swirling white, with no point of reference to be fixed in the maelstrom. In one direction lay the arctic, where she meant to summer if her funds would take her that far. In another direction lay the hospitable coal port where her first ship had docked, and opposite it lay the expansive wheat fields of the prairies, and the great mountains, and the cedar rainforests of the furthest coast. And somewhere, she supposed, was the way back to Ohsweken, where perhaps the milder edges of the very same storm were blowing. 

Willie warmed her hands around her tin cup and inhaled the steam off her coffee. There would be no going anywhere, not for a long while, but after that, who could say? A woman could not ask for a better Christmas present. 

She smiled, humming carols to herself until Pip let out a whine of protest and buried himself back under the blankets.

_The edges of a torn-out leaf of paper and a faint imprint on the top of the page below:_

_Dearest Bertha,_

_I hope this letter finds you well._


End file.
